How many languages do you need to learn.. (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

How many languages do you need to learn..
Tags: Number of Languages
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion	( Topic Closed)

60 messages over 8 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next >>

paparaciii
Diglot
Senior Member
Latvia
Joined 6342 days ago
204 posts - 223 votes

Speaks: Latvian*, Russian
Studies: English

Message 25 of 60

28 January 2010 at 9:19am | IP Logged

goosefrabbas wrote:

Russian is 8th. There aren't any other Balto-Slavic languages on the top 20 list, but I'm sure that knowing Russian would make it easy to communicate with people who speak Ukrainian, Serbo-Croatian, Czech, Slovak, Slovene, Polish, Belarusian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Bulgarian, etc.

Only if the speakers of those languages have learned Russian or a Russian speaker has learned those languages you mentioned. Otherwise - no no no, my dear friend.
But I certainly emphasize that it depends on what do you mean by "communicate". Because I have discovered that if I use some improvised sign language, I can communicate even with my dog...

My 2 cents.
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zooplah
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
zooplah.farvista.net
Joined 6374 days ago
100 posts - 116 votes

Speaks: English*, Esperanto
Studies: German

Message 26 of 60

01 February 2010 at 6:13pm | IP Logged

QiuJP wrote:

if you want to communicate with:

90%, 95%, 99% of the world's population in their native language?

How would have the number of languages that you need changed if you want to communicate with the same percentages of the world's population, and you include the usage of L2?

I don't know if that would even be possible. A large quantity of languages are spoken by isolated peoples that you'd probably not have anything to say to anyway. Also, a large quantity of languages are only spoken, but not written, so you'd have a bit of a problem there.

Personally, I wouldn't want to. I irritate enough people in my native tongue, so I don't see why I'd want to learn enough to irritate 90% of the people of the world.
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Al3
Tetraglot
Newbie
Mexico
Joined 5554 days ago
3 posts - 4 votes
Speaks: Spanish*, Portuguese, English, French
Studies: Italian

Message 27 of 60

01 February 2010 at 7:33pm | IP Logged

I think being able to speak fluently 3 or 4 of the most spoken languages in the world would do, since many of that 90% could speak one of those languages, if not native, at least as a second or third language, so you'll be able to comunicate.
Greetings!

Edited by Al3 on 01 February 2010 at 7:36pm
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re4lover
Groupie
Egypt
Joined 5443 days ago
63 posts - 66 votes

Speaks: Arabic (Egyptian)*
Studies: English, Russian, Modern Hebrew, Aramaic

Message 28 of 60

01 February 2010 at 7:40pm | IP Logged

I'm just wish to learn English and Russian at the first place
then I will choose French
I guess that I want to learn more and more of languages
but for now
English , Russian:)
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Sennin
Senior Member
Bulgaria
Joined 6040 days ago
1457 posts - 1759 votes

5 sounds

Message 29 of 60

01 February 2010 at 11:32pm | IP Logged

paparaciii wrote:

goosefrabbas wrote:

It's a common misconception that all Slavic languages are sort of the same and once you know Russian you know'em all ;).

Edited by Sennin on 01 February 2010 at 11:49pm
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Levi
Pentaglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5573 days ago
2268 posts - 3328 votes

Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish
Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian

Message 30 of 60

02 February 2010 at 4:06am | IP Logged

It is also a common misconception that Lithuanian and Latvian are closely related to Russian. They're not.
1 person has voted this message useful

goosefrabbas
Triglot
Pro Member
United States
Joined 6374 days ago
393 posts - 475 votes

Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: German, Italian
Personal Language Map

Message 31 of 60

02 February 2010 at 4:08am | IP Logged

Looks like I've learned quite a few things here. :)
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Antiprism
Newbie
United Kingdom
Joined 5422 days ago
6 posts - 6 votes
Speaks: English*

Message 32 of 60

02 February 2010 at 10:43am | IP Logged

lichtrausch wrote:

m32amir wrote:

In other words although learning exotic languages like Chinese or Hindi it's getting popular, these 5 languages (EN, FR, GER, SPA, ITA) are always gonna be widely used.

In 50 years I'd be surprised if even 1% of the world population learns Italian as a foreign language. Even now Italian is hardly used outside of Italy and it's only going to go downhill from here.

We've already had a discussion along these lines in another thread: just because Italian isn't useful for AMERICANS doesn't mean it's not a useful language. Italian is more useful for Europeans than Spanish, for the very good reasons that 1. there are more Italians than there are Spanish people, 2. the Italian economy is stronger than the Spanish and 3. It's a national language of Switzerland, a country with an extremely high quality of life.

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